


Cat's Eyes

by prepare4trouble



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale lies sometimes, Aziraphale wants a kitten, Crowley gets a little paranoid, Gen, Tumblr Prompt, this is very silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 21:22:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20552894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: Snake's eyes are nothing like cat's eyes. They'renot.





	Cat's Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt on Tumblr that I should have posted ages ago.
> 
> _"A fic where Crowley comes across something that cats' eyes dilate visibly when they're interested in things, and then he starts checking out his reflection whenever he can "subtly", to see if it's happening for him. (Eventually he comes across something else that says snakes don't have that thing.)"_

“The lady who runs the record shop cornered me yesterday,” Aziraphale said, completely out of the blue, one morning over breakfast. “Her cat’s had kittens. Six of them, can you believe?”

Crowley glanced up at the angel and made a noise that he hoped sounded suitably interested.

“Now of course she’s going to have to find homes for them all. Well, most of them. I suspect she’ll keep at least one. She would keep them all if she could; you should have felt the love coming off of her at just the thought of them. Hopefully she’ll be able to find homes close by.”

Crowley swallowed a gulp of his coffee. He was struck with the sudden certainty that the angel was going to produce a cardboard box from somewhere, pull out a kitten and tell him they were parents.

“Did you know cats’ eyes change with their mood?” Aziraphale said.

Crowley frowned and peered at him over his newspaper. That was an unexpected change of conversational direction. The angel was tucking into a croissant with butter and strawberry jam while his tea cooled on the table in front of him. There was no book or newspaper or anything anywhere nearby that might have contained this random piece of information.

Crowley folded the newspaper down to check the front page, to see whether there was something about cats in the headline, but again found nothing. He took another sip of his coffee and shook his head. “No, can’t say I did,” he said.

“It’s quite fascinating, really,” Aziraphale continued. “If you know a cat well enough, you can guess what mood it’s experiencing just by looking at its eyes. You can tell how it feels about you.”

“Uh, great,” Crowley said. “What’s your point?”

“Just that I’ve noticed something similar with you from time to time,” Aziraphale told him.

Crowley reached into his pocket and pulled out his shades. “I’m not a cat,” he said.

“Oh, I know. But…”

Crowley put on the sunglasses and continued to read the paper.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale told him. “Please don’t do that. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Crowley turned the page and tried to concentrate on what he was reading.

* * *

Crowley stared into the mirror, examining his eyes carefully. They _did_ change, he knew that. They changed when he was stressed, or when he was afraid. When he didn’t have the mental energy to put into keeping them more-or-less human shaped. The colour would expand and chase away the whites of his eyes.

He knew that. But that wasn’t what Aziraphale had been talking about.

He leaned in a little closer, examining the slitted pupils. They remained the same, no change in the size or the shape, nothing that would give anything away.

Aziraphale was imagining things.

Only, what if he wasn’t?

What if it was something about proximity to Aziraphale that made the difference? He loved the angel, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit that now. But it wasn’t something that he wanted written on his face.

He thought about him and stared into the mirror, but all he could feel was frustration, and his eyes refused to budge.

“Snakes don’t _do_ that,” he said to himself.

But then, was he sure about that?

* * *

“My dear, what on Earth are you doing?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley turned to look at him, pushing his shades a little higher up his face as he did. He had been looking at his eyes in the rearview mirror as he had been driving through London at somewhere close to 80 miles an hour. “Driving,” he said.

* * *

Crowley looked into the screen on his phone, camera on and aimed at his face. He stared at his own eyes.

“Are you taking those selfies again?” Aziraphale asked.

He let the phone drop down onto his lap. “Yeah,” he said.

“Can you take one with me in it?”

Crowley sighed, but raised the phone again and gestured for Aziraphale to move to next to him. “Yeah, come on then,” he said.

* * *

Maybe it was something to do with the light levels. Pupils also expanded and contracted when it was dark, or light. Maybe _that_ was what Aziraphale had seen.

* * *

“You look okay,” Aziraphale told him one evening as they were heading out to dinner.

Crowley frowned. “Uh, thanks?” he said, not sure how to take that. It was better than _not_ looking okay, but as compliments went, it was somewhat lacking. “You look okay too,” he added.

Aziraphale smiled. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just wanted you to know that you don’t have to worry.”

He hadn’t been, but _now_ he was. “Worry about what?” he asked.

“Well, you seem to have been a little preoccupied lately by looking into mirrors and other reflective surfaces. I just want you to know that you don’t need to be. You’re perfect just as you are.

Crowley felt himself blush and turned away. He wished he had a mirror so that he could check his eyes. If they hadn’t changed at a time like that, they were never going to.

* * *

He was an idiot. Weeks of paranoia, of checking his reflection in the mirror, in his phone, in the surface of the duckpond at the park, and all he had needed to do was go online.

And there it was. The answer. He relaxed for the first time in what felt like a very long time.

* * *

“Snake eyes aren’t like cat’s eyes,” Crowley announced as he pushed open the door to the bookshop that afternoon.

The place was empty of customers, just the way Aziraphale liked it, and the angel was sitting at the desk reading a worn and well-loved copy of some old book he had probably had for a couple of hundred years. He looked up, peering at him over the tops of the reading glasses that he didn’t need to wear, and frowned. “Sorry, what?”

“Eyes,” Crowley said again. “You said mine changed, like a cat’s. They don’t. I checked online.”

Aziraphale smiled. “Oh. Yes, I know. I checked for myself at the time. You were right.”

Crowley folded his arms. “You mean to tell me you’ve known all this time?”

“Well…” the angel frowned. “Yes. You.. haven’t been wondering about it for weeks, have you?”

Crowley shook his head. “What? Me? No, of course not. They’re _my_ eyes. I know how they work.”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I think I have to make a confession. To be totally honest, I already knew that your eyes didn’t react like a cat’s. I just had to make a quick change of subject. I had been working my way up to seeing how you would feel about me adopting a kitten, but I could tell from the look on your face that you didn’t want one, so I kind of… steered the conversation in another direction.”

Crowley stared at him.“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. “I had no idea it would bother you that much.”

“It didn’t.”

The angel nodded, but appeared unconvinced.

Crowley sighed. “I _knew_ you were going to say you wanted a kitten. I was surprised when you didn’t. They’ll be about ready to go to their new homes now, won’t they?”

“Yes, well I don’t want one if you wouldn’t like it. I want you to feel welcome here.”

“And you didn’t think that maybe the best way of finding out if I wanted one might be to _ask_ me?”

Aziraphale looked up at him for a long moment. He removed the reading glasses and placed them on the desk in front of him. “You mean to say you _would_…”

“Maybe,” Crowley said. “On two conditions. First, you don’t go around telling people we’re _parents_, and second, we get more than one. We’re not here all the time and it’s not going to be an outside cat. I don’t want her getting lonely.”

Aziraphale smiled widely. “Last I heard, there are still four waiting for a home,” he said. “I’ll close up the shop, and we can go and meet them.”


End file.
